1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of speech recognition software and more particularly to propagation of corrections in speech recognition software.
2. Description of the Related Art
Speech recognition software has a wide variety of uses. One important area where this technology has proved to be very useful is the conversion of spoken utterances into text for inclusion in a word processing document. Word processing applications may have incorporated therein a speech recognition function. Alternatively, a variety of speech recognition programs are commercially available which provide the speech recognition function to existing non-speech enabled word-processing applications. In any case, the ability of these speech enabled word processing applications to convert human speech into text has improved dramatically in recent years. Due to a variety of factors, however, errors may yet occur in the speech recognition function performed by such applications. Accordingly, it is often necessary for a user to review a document which has been dictated to a word processing application by means of such speech recognition software.
One notable aspect of error words existing in a speech enabled word processing application is that they tend not to be misspelled, but are instead words which have been misrecognized. Such error words are typically a close acoustic match to the correct word, but often involve spelling variations or in some instances may be an entirely unrelated but similar sounding word or words. These errors may be difficult to detect by automated means such as conventional spell checking features provided with word processing applications. This is primarily due to the fact that such words tend to be spelled correctly but are otherwise erroneous in the context of the text.
Moreover, when a misrecognition occurs by a speech recognition engine in the course of converting a string of spoken utterances to text, such misrecognitions can tend to be repeated as the speech recognition engine continuously misrecognizes the same spoken utterance for the same or other erroneous text words. This may occur when the spoken utterance is out of vocabulary for the speech recognition engine or may be related to some other problem such as an individual's unconventional pronunciation of such word. In any case, the ability to efficiently correct such errors throughout a text document is important to the ability to efficiently make use of speech enabled word processing applications.